Uptown Man Gets Life For Fire That Killed 3

An Uptown man was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole Tuesday for starting a fire that killed three people in an apartment building in October 1988.

Cook County Criminal Court Judge James Heyda rejected the death penalty for Frank Creque. Under state law, Creque then faced a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment because at least two people died in the fire at 4236 N. Kenmore Ave.

Creque, 47, apologized and asked for mercy before he was sentenced.

A jury convicted him last December of three counts each of murder and aggravated arson.

Assistant State`s Atty. Paul Tsukuno, chief of the state`s attorney`s arson unit, said Creque started the fire after the owner of the apartment building ordered him out in two weeks for being late on rent payments.

Creque argued with the owner and threatened to report alleged building code violations to the city, said Tsukuno, who prosecuted the case with Edward Snow.

Creque then poured lighter fluid from a front stairwell to a couch on the main floor and set the couch afire, Tsukuno said. The fire spread quickly up the stairwell to the third floor, trapping three people there.

A witness, Gregory Smith, testified at the trial that he saw Creque pour the lighter fluid and start the fire.

When police confronted Creque soon after the fire and told him that someone had seen him start the blaze, the suspect said he was alone in the hallway when he ignited the couch, Tsukuno said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Creque was convicted on at least three separate charges of contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor. He also received a one- to three-year prison sentence for attempting to kill his estranged wife in 1980, as well as a concurrent three-year prison term for burglary.